Modern intimate trust demands self-revelation that produces permanent psychological tension

Evidence

In relations of intimacy of the modern type, trust is always ambivalent, and the possibility of severance is more or less ever present. Personal ties can be ruptured, and ties of intimacy returned to the sphere of impersonal contacts—in the broken love affair, the intimate suddenly becomes again a stranger. The demand of “opening oneself up” to the other which personal trust relations now presume, the injunction to hide nothing from the other, mix reassurance and deep anxiety. Personal trust demands a level of self-understanding and self-expression which must itself be a source of psychological tension. For mutual self-revelation is combined with the need for reciprocity and support; yet the two are frequently incompatible. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 345

Categorization

• XREF: Explains Stevens’s avoidance of facework with Miss Kenton: the anxiety of reciprocal self-revelation in personal trust pushes him back toward the safety of system trust — a perfect dramatization for the reader’s thesis. — connects to: Modern self-discovery is intrinsically bound up with reflexive trust-building — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 289; Reflexive personal trust becomes trust in tact and disciplined self-presentation — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 255; Personal trust becomes a variant of system trust when it reflects on self-presentation — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 239 (+8 more)

Related

• Reflexive personal trust becomes trust in tact and disciplined self-presentation (similarity 0.87)
• Continuing intimacy requires each person to remain partly indistinct (similarity 0.85)
• Reflexive personal trust enables actions impossible by simple trust (similarity 0.84)
• Learning to trust is steered by the developing self-identity (similarity 0.84)
• System trust underwrites ontological security but yields no psychological reward (similarity 0.83)
• Personal trust becomes a variant of system trust when it reflects on self-presentation (similarity 0.83)
• Modernity does not replace intimacy with impersonality but transforms it through distancing (similarity 0.83)
• Winning trust requires participating socially and absorbing others’ expectations into one’s self-presentation (similarity 0.83)
• Modern societies increasingly substitute self-presentation for feeling as a basis of trust (similarity 0.83)
• Self-presentation presumes minimum trust, and trust expands possible actions and accumulates as capital. (similarity 0.82)
• Modern self-discovery is intrinsically bound up with reflexive trust-building (similarity 0.81)
• Personal intermediaries are the default route to new trust (similarity 0.80)
• System trust is faceless while personal trust and reembedding depend on facework. (similarity 0.79)
• System trust cannot supply the mutuality that personal trust provides (similarity 0.79)
• Trust stems from societal self-presentation conditions, not only individual strategies as Goffman holds. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Reflexive personal trust becomes trust in tact and disciplined self-presentation #expands (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 255
• Modern self-discovery is intrinsically bound up with reflexive trust-building #expands (0.70) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 289
• Personal trust becomes a variant of system trust when it reflects on self-presentation #expands (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 239
• Winning trust requires participating socially and absorbing others’ expectations into one’s self-presentation #expands (0.70)
• Misplaced trust damages the trusting person’s presented self-image as well as their interests #complicates (0.60)